Disney's "Lone Ranger" No Match for "Despicable Me 2" at the Box Office
The Lone Ranger didn't exactly ride to the rescue this past holiday weekend. The reboot of the storied Western hero's tale stumbled on its debut, taking in less than $50 million in the five days stretching over July 4, according to data compiled by Box Office Mojo. That put the movie, with its estimated $215 million production budget, at a distant second place behind another first-weekender, Despicable Me 2. The animated comedy sequel raked in nearly three times as much, with $141 million, $82.5 million of which came from the Friday-Sunday period. That was significantly better than the $56.4 million the original Despicable Me grossed across its opening weekend in 2010.
The Lone Ranger is distributed by Disney unit Buena Vista, while Despicable Me 2 is put out by Comcast's Universal.
Third place belonged to action comedy The Heat, now in its second week of release. The film took in around $25 million, said Box Office Mojo, bringing its domestic total to $86.4 million. That's more than double its estimated production budget. The Heat is distributed by Twenty-First Century Fox's Fox.
Rounding out the top five was a pair of movies that have been in cinemas for several weeks now. Monsters University, from celebrated Disney animation house Pixar, collected $19.6 million in ticket sales, while zombie combat epic World War Z -- distributed by Viacom's Paramount -- took in $18.2 million.
The article Disney's "Lone Ranger" No Match for "Despicable Me 2" at the Box Office originally appeared on Fool.com.
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